With an aim to improve the hygiene level at railway stations, Central Railway will soon formulate a 'sanitation and cleanliness manual' that will have rules, procedures and responsibilities to be carried out on day-to-day basis. Pune station is one of the seven stations under the Central Railway where the project would be implemented in the first phase.

Subodh Jain, general manager, Central Railway, who was on a day-long visit to Pune Division said Central Railway was planning to set up a separate body that will be responsible for garbage disposal and maintaining cleanliness at the stations.

"Currently, different departments of Railways such as commercial, medical, engineering, garbage disposal are looking after different aspects of cleanliness. There's an apparent lack of co-ordination between them which in turn is hampering the hygiene at stations. The instruction manual will clearly demarcate the responsibility and create checks to penalise erring bodies and individuals," said Jain.

Responding to increasing complaints of harassments of passengers by Railway Protection Force (RPF) and Government Railway Police (RPF), Jain assured the powers to monitor CCTV cameras would be given to Commercial Department of the Railways so that such incidents are avoided. Currently the monitoring authority of the CCTV cameras is RPF. "I assure you that soon Commercial Department will also be able to monitor CCTV footages," said Jain.

Jain also said that additional 46 cameras, funds for which were allocated in the previous budget, will be installed at the Pune station by the end of March 2013.

As part of his visit, Jain also inaugurated the newly extended Platform No 6. The length of the platform has been increased by 136 metres and it will now be able to accommodate 22-bogey trains. Earlier, the platform was only able to accommodate 18-bogey trains.

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